Wednesday 23 May 2012 09.08 EDT
First published on Wednesday 23 May 2012 09.08 EDT

Opposites often attract in rowing. Different strokes and all that. Redgrave and Pinsent were hardly identical but in tandem they were irresistible. It is the same with Helen Glover and Heather Stanning, the fast-emerging GB women's pair. Cagney and Lacey, Thelma and Louise, Glover and Stanning ... there is a rhythm to all the best double acts.

To say the "two Hs" were destined to end up in the same small boat would, however, be stretching it. Glover is a 25-year-old PE teacher from Cornwall who had never rowed until four years ago. Stanning grew up in Scotland and is a captain in the Royal Artillery who has trained at Sandhurst and West Point. So who calls the shots on the water? Glover, naturally. "People always ask us, because I'm the one in the military, if I'm the one in charge of the boat and if I do all the calls," Stanning once told an army interviewer. "Actually it's the other way round. You are never going to mess with your PE teacher, are you?"

It matters not that one of them is tidy and the other – Glover – has a history of turning up to training in odd socks. Together they won their first world cup race of this Olympic season in Belgrade this month and are out to impress again against a potentially stronger field, including their fierce rivals from New Zealand, at the world cup event in Lucerne this weekend. Having threatened the world record in their semi-final in Belgrade, they are another shining example of GB Rowing's strength in depth.

Glover's rise from international junior cross-country runner and potential hockey player to rowing's elite is already a good story in itself. Having never rowed back home in Penzance, she is a product of UK Sport's Sporting Giants scheme which set out to test whether thousands of youngsters had any aptitude for rowing, handball or volleyball. "They tested 4,500 of us in groups of 200 at a time. I remember sitting in a room in Bisham Abbey in 2007 and someone saying: 'A gold medallist in 2012 could be sat in this room. Look around you.' I thought: 'Right, I'm going to make that me.' It was quite surreal."

Sure enough, she ended up on GB Rowing's Start programme in Bath, funded by the Germany-based electronics company Siemens, where Stanning was also based. Within two years the pair were winning silver at the 2010 world championships on Lake Karapiro in New Zealand, the 27-year-old Stanning having put her military duties on hold.

The prospect of racing at the Olympics and then, potentially, heading for war-torn Afghanistan within the space of a few months would blow some minds but Stanning, whose parents were both in the Royal Navy, is no one's idea of a soft touch. "Everything I learned as a troop commander has shaped who I am now," she says matter-of-factly. "Little things I learned in Sandhurst have helped. It can only make you a stronger person. You've got to be mentally in the right place to put your body on the line. It's important to make every kilometre count in training and challenge yourself."

Physical fitness will certainly not be a problem. To describe the GB squad's training regime as intense is to understate it. Glover burns up to 4,500 calories per day, more than twice as many as an average person. "It sounds really cruel when I'm talking to my family or friends who are all on diets and I'm complaining at how much I have to eat."

All the crews already know precisely what they will have for breakfast on the day of their Olympic races. "You're not going to wake up on the morning of an Olympic final and think: 'Ooh, I fancy bacon,'" stresses Glover. "You've got to know when you're on the start-line that everything you've eaten and done that morning is appropriate to getting your best performance."

Having finished just 0.8sec behind the gold medal-winning New Zealanders at the world championships in Bled last year, there is an even greater desire to leave nothing to chance. Hence the daily quest for any kind of edge.

"No one likes the feeling you get when you're halfway through a tough test on the rowing machine and everything hurts," continues Glover. "But if there's a good result at the end of it it's always worth it. Everything you're doing is to ensure you're at your very best for seven minutes on a given day this summer. If we don't train tomorrow, you can bet the rest of the world will be. We need to be getting better too. It makes you sit a little taller and push a little harder when you know everyone else is doing the same."